Joe Strummer, the leader of pioneering English punk-rock band The Clash, died 10 years ago today, Dec. 22, 2002. Did you see any of The Clash's San Diego shows, or catch Strummer's final area appearance here in 2002 with his band, The Mescalleros?

If so, tell us about it in the Comments section below. Or share your favorite Clash song, album or memory of Strummer.

"How would I like to be remembered?"

Joe Strummer pondered this question for a few moments before offering a characteristically thoughtful response.

"Well, I think it's all about reincarnation, you know. So I don't really care about being remembered, because then you're missing the point."

Strummer died ten years ago, today, on Dec. 22, 2002. He offered the above comments at the conclusion of an extended interview on June 13, 2002, a little more than six months before his unexpected death on December 29 of the same year.

A few months later, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Clash, the pioneering punk-rock band he launched in London in 1976. The 2003 Grammy Awards telecast paid tribute to him with a charged version of The Clash's "London Calling" that featured alternating lead vocals by Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Little Steven. In 2007, Strummer's life was chronicled in the film biography "Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten."

""I saw the Clash play when I was 12 in Los Angeles," said Jakob Dylan, the leader of The Wallflowers, in a 1997 U-T San Diego interview. "It was not my introduction to music, but to discovering something on my own. And it was the first thing that made me want to get involved with music. I liked a lot of the British music -- Elvis Costello, The Jam, Stiff Little Fingers and 999. But for the most part, I gravitated toward the groups with songwriters; I never understood the (Sex) Pistols or bands like T.S.O.L. I needed to find something in the songs, and the Clash had more to offer."

The void left by Strummer's passing has never been filled, as befits a man who almost always made the best case for his music in his own words and songs. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death, here is Strummer's 2002 U-T San Diego interview, which he did by phone from his home in the English countryside..

This was not the final time he would talk to a journalist before his untimely death six months later, but it was one his last in-depth interviews....

San Diego's blink-182, Rancid and Green Day are just a few of the American bands that owe a major artistic and commercial debt to The Clash, the pioneering English punk-rock quartet that helped turn popular music on its head in the second half of the 1970s.

Billed as "the only band that matters," The Clash specialized in compact but combustible songs, such as "White Riot," "Tommy Gun" and "London Calling," that galvanized a generation. Drawing from roots-rock, reggae, funk and rap, their music was fueled by razor-sharp guitar riffs, thundering rhythms and fiery political and social messages.

Sadly, those still-pertinent messages have been largely lost since then. Today's pop-punk clones draw from the sound and look of vintage punk, but not from the rebellion against inequality and disenfranchisment that inspired it.

As the former lead singer and driving force in The Clash, Joe Strummer has every reason to be dismayed that the revolution his band helped ignite has become such a sanitized commodity. But the veteran singer-guitarist, who now leads an excellent new band called The Mescaleros, isn't bitter.

In fact, he doesn't mind if the latest generation of shopping-mall punks is completely detached from the protest-driven impetus that made The Clash, Sex Pistols and other first-generation punk bands so vital.

"Everyone has to take the world as they find it, and it would be horrible to keep looking back," said Strummer, who headlines Sunday's marathon Hootenanny 2002 festival at downtown's Embarcadero Marina Park South. "So I'm quick to forget about the past, even though it's all connected with now."

His words to the contrary, Strummer vividly recalls the days when being a punk meant being regarded as a genuine menace to society, and when uncompromising young bands challenged the status quo instead of embracing it. But he is wary of being perceived as a punk godfather pining for the good old days of gob-covered anarchy.

"I realized quite recently that just because we were there at the beginning doesn't mean we understand it better than anyone else," said Strummer, speaking from his countryside home in Somerset, England.

"On the other hand, we can't distance ourselves. I had tons of people ringing me up on the 20th anniversary (of punk-rock), and on the 25th anniversary. And I fended them all off because I didn't feel like I had anything intelligent to contribute. But I was thinking just last night: 'Oh, yeah, it does give you a lot to draw from.'

"I will always believe in punk-rock, because it's about creating something for yourself. Part of it was: 'Stop being a sap! Lift your head up and see what is really going on in the political, social and religious situations,and try and see through all the smoke screens.' This is a fantastic thing to try and follow through on."

Yet, too few bands or fans today are interested in learning about punk's legacy, let alone expanding on it. And bands (and audiences) that forget the past are doomed to keep enduring homogenized versions of it, especially when the true spirit of punk has been co-opted by Madison Avenue and by the music industry's unending quest to transform youthful rebellion into harmless entertainment and fodder for advertising.

"Well, when you're in the middle of it, you're too young and stupid to see clearly," Strummer said. "Everything gets corrupted, but then the spirit lives on and inspires other generations."

The Sex Pistols crashed and burned after just one album, while The Clash lasted nearly a decade. But the band's best-known lineup -- Strummer, guitarist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and ex-Pat Travers drummer Topper Headon -- imploded by the time its 1982 album, "Combat Rock," yielded the U.S. radio hits "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" (now being heard as a U.S. TV jingle for an upscale brand of liquor).

"Everyone says The Clash should've been where U2 is now," said Strummer, 49, who was born John Graham Mellor. "But then some groups are born to burst out and go out in a blaze, and some seem to go on forever. We were the hot-rod model, like a dragster, that came along to drag everything into the future and then explode at the end of the runway. That was our chemical makeup.

"Thankfully, we kind of jumped off the boat before it hit the shore. Because almost the same week we went Top 5 in America was when we started to (disintegrate). To be honest, I don't think my personality is correct to be that big."

Few punks, then or now, seem to realize that the music owes a considerable debt to the English pub-rock movement that immediately preceded punk-rock's arrival.

"It was very important," said Strummer, whose pre-Clash pub-rock band, the 101ers, included future Public Image Ltd. guitarist Keith Levene, "because it opened up all these little places to play music in. Before that, there wasn't anywhere to play, so if you were a rogue group or a roving bunch of

musicians, well, there's nothing like getting feedback from an audience when you're learning.

"That encouraged me, and I used to book groups like The Stranglers into pubs that had never had music before. So we were real encouraged by the first wave of pub-rock bands, like Bees Make Honey and The Tyla Gang, and they encouraged the punk movement that followed."

Strummer made a half-hearted attempt to launch a solo career with his stillborn 1989 album, "Earthquake Weather." He also worked briefly with Bob Dylan and The Pogues, scored the 1987 film "Walker," and appeared in such movies as "Sid and Nancy," "Mystery Train" and "Straight to Hell." He then withdrew from the spotlight until he formed The Mescaleros in 1999, in large part so he and his wife could raise their three children.

"My daughters wear little Clash pins, because it's kind of fashionable now," Strummer said. "I take a little whiff of pride from that. But they're into Incubus and stuff like that. They play stuff that drives me up the

wall, but any teenager does. And it makes you think about cycles in music, when they play something that sounds like a knife on a blackboard to you. It makes you think: 'Is it me, the music, or an eternally replicating situation?' "

Given the benefit of hindsight, does he regard his tenure with The Clash as a badge of honor, a cross to bear, or both?

"Well, you gotta say it was all good or you sound like a moaning Minnie," said Strummer, who performs various Clash favorites with The Mescaleros. "It is difficult, in that you can never get away from that music, and I think we're all yearning for new virgin snow to trample on. But people are paying to get in and they want to hear something they know of yours, so it's only respectful to play it."

The Mescaleros' second album, last year's "Global a Go-Go," contains some of its leader's best work since the heyday of The Clash -- an unlikely but engaging synthesis of roots-rock, Celtic and hip-hop with Colombian dance rhythms, Eastern European grooves, bhangra music from India, and more.

"Love of music really motivates us; what a beautiful feeling creativity is," Strummer said, before lamenting The Mescaleros' uphill battle to be heard. "There's no way we can get on radio or video channels, so we have to fight for our corner like we're totally unknown."

'I will always believe in punk-rock, because it's about creating something for yourself. Part of it was: 'Stop being a sap! Lift your head up and see what is really going on in the political, social and religious situations, and try and see through all the smoke screens.' This is a fantastic thing to try and follow through on.'

Joe Strummer -- Bonus Q&A

Question: Do you regret the final Clash album with a revamped lineup, `Cut the Crap?'

Strummer: Well, yes, really. My biggest regret was that I let the (Clash's) manager influence me, or over-influence me. I think he wanted to know what it was like and be in the group kind of, which was something I could never have foreseen.

Q: This is a question I asked Pete Townshend some years ago: Can rock grow old

gracefully, or is that a contradiction in terms?

Strummer: Wow. God. I think it can grow old gracefully, as long as it keeps re-inventing itself, like with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. It can certainly live forever, as long as it challenges people.

Q: There are bands now in America who sing exactly the way you did in the Clash. They connect with the music and image of punk, but not with the underlying social and political conditions that inspired it. Does this connection, and disconnection, matter?

Strummer: I don't think so. Because everyone has to take the world as they find it and it would be horrible to keep looking back. We learned enough from jazz purists squabbling, so I'm quick to forget about the past. It's all connected, but comparing and contrasting I find to be a useless exercise.

Q: What do you feel your strongest and weakest points are?

Strummer: I got no self-belief, and that's my weak point. My strongest point is I've got a lot of soul, which is a nice thing to have.

Q: I was rather surprised to see a recent liquor commercial on American TV that

used The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" as an advertising jingle.

Strummer: See, this is surprising to me. Because all I can remember was there was some whiskey (company) that wanted to use it and we voted on it, and Mick Jones voted 'no'. And I rang him up because I think the only honorable thing you can do is (to) advertise things you yourself would use, like blue jeans, not a terrible product. I rang him up and said it was quite a good whiskey, but he still said no, so I'm surprised. I'll have to get on the phone (and figure it out).

Q: Is not wanting to pander to nostalgia-mongers the best reason for The Clash to not reunite?

Strummer: Yes it wouldn't be good to get up and do your party trick one (more) time. It only seems attractive to me if it would be a viable artistic thing that wasn't forced, and that's asking a lot from the past. But never say never; I've learned to say that.